reboot the republic

One Nation? Under God? Indivisible?

From DumpDC

If you grew up in America, you learned the Pledge of Allegiance pretty early in your life. And if you emigrated here, you learned it, either to fit in or before you tried to become an American citizen.

But have you ever learned about the Pledge of Allegiance itself, and stopped repeating it by rote long enough to think about what you are pledging? Perhaps if you learn more about it, you’ll hesitate…or decline…the next time you get the chance to recite those words. And, in an even greater stretch of courage, you would tell your children the truth about the Pledge so they could make up their own minds about their own actions.

Baptist clergyman and avowed socialist Francis Bellamy wrote the first Pledge of Allegiance back in 1892. It was part of an effort by the popular children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion” to sell American nationalism and American flags to public schools. It was timed to coincide with celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America.

Bellamy’s original Pledge read as follows:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Bellamy intended that the Pledge be accompanied by a salute, known as the “Bellamy salute.” He described the gesture in that October 1892 article in “The Youth’s Companion.” Here is a photo of the “Bellamy salute” from 1941.

Look familiar? Looks like the German National Socialists of the 1930s and 1940s. You may be familiar with them by their other name…The Nazi Party.

In 1923 and 1924, the National Flag Conference voted to replace the words “my flag” with “the flag of the United States of America.” The United States Congress officially recognized the Pledge as the official national pledge on June 22, 1942. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt that opted for the hand-over-heart gesture in 1942, the same salute used to this day.

The words “under God,” were finally officially added in 1954 by a joint resolution of Congress and signed by President Dwight Eisenhower.

OK…that’s the history lesson. Here are some more important points to consider.

1. Abraham Lincoln usually referred to America as “the Union” during his presidency. That is, until he wrote the Gettysburg Address in 1863. In his first line, he invented what had never existed before, and redefined the United States with the words, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation…”. Poppycock! Even King George recognized each colony as free, sovereign and independent States in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, after the colonies defeated Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. A loose central government existed under the Articles of Confederation from 1776 to 1788. The American Federal Government did not exist under the Constitution until 1788.

The sovereign states of America created a servant in 1781 with the Articles of Confederation, which was called The United States of America. The Constitution superseded it in 1788. It was granted certain strictly defined powers, and tasked with carrying them out, as well as to protect the states from invasion and domestic violence (Article IV). It was also prevented from assuming powers not specifically granted to it (9th & 10th Amendment). But an association of states is not a state itself. Neither is an association of country clubs a country club, or an association of fire departments a fire department. Putting on the costume of nationhood does not make you a real nation any more than donning a red suit with horns and a bifurcated tail makes you the Devil.

2. Bellamy was helping promote American nationalism to public school children. Prior to that, there was little in the way of American nationalism known in America. People identified with their home state. They called themselves “Virginians” or “New Yorkers,” not “Americans.” Bellamy’s pledge referred to “my flag, and to the republic for which it stands.” Even in 1892…nearly 30 years after the War of Northern Aggression…that meant the flag of a sovereign state, which was a republic. But that is not what Bellamy intended with his new Pledge. The new Pledge of Allegiance was written to promote the idea of an American nation, not the existing confederation of nations that was the united States.

Remember that Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution states that the United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a “republican form of government.” There is no definition in the Constitution of the word “republican,” but it is generally agreed to mean a “representative democracy” rather than a “direct democracy.” But there is not one word in the US Constitution that proclaims that the entity known as the United States of America is a Republic or a nation unto itself. It is a government created under the aegis of the several States. That is why the document that preceded the US Constitution was called The Articles of Confederation. The sovereign states confederated to form a government, in like manner to a group of property owners forming a property managing company and bestowing it with certain duties and powers. But the states did not sign over the “deeds to their properties,” so to speak, to the manager. Further, any one of the parties could leave, or the group could fire the manager, dissolve the management company and start over.

The United States is an artificial corporation created by the States for their mutual benefit. That sets it apart from the idea of a nation which is something that exists on its own; whereas an artificial corporation is created by external authority.

3. The Pledge says “Indivisible.” The very intention of the writer was to promote a concept in the minds of children that America was not divisible. In 1892, the nationalists thought that the War of Northern Aggression had settled the issue of secession with rifle and cannon. But the Northern victory only postponed the subject of secession until later years. Still, the efforts to inculcate school children during the entirety of the 20th Century was a smashing success, since most people still think that the USA is indivisible. Nothing could be further from the truth.

However, as V.I. Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

So, nationalism has been promoted to supplant the notion of state sovereignty, even though the United States of America is not a nation. And the notion of nationhood for the USA is a relatively new concept, the Pledge of Allegiance to this non-nation having only been officially accepted in 1942…a scant 68 years ago.

And, here on the North American continent, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation has taken over the laboratory and made the Doctor his indentured servant, telling him that he can never be free of the monster’s domination.

Finally, with the Patriot Act in place, Homeland Security watching everybody, confiscatory taxation enforced at the end of a gun and a DC government spending trillions of dollars they don’t have, we all know that there is no “liberty and justice for all.” Liberty and justice don’t look like America in the second decade of the 21st Century.

So, when you place your hand over your heart and mindlessly recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are pledging your fealty to a nation that does not exist, and an authoritarian Federal Government that has completely ignored the Constitution and rules in any manner it chooses, without regard to any restrictions on its power whatsoever. Your pledge of allegiance says that you belong to the tyrants and criminals who stole the United States of America. They don’t even have to threaten YOU…you’re voluntarily their property.

Now, how does that feel?

Secession…not American nationalism…is the Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

Many thanks to Donald Livingston of The Abbeville Institute for his contributions to this article.

Texas County Restricts Well Water

From The Waco Tribune

A few county water suppliers are concerned that water-pumping restrictions being set by the county’s groundwater management district will prevent them from being able to serve future water consumers.

Well owners will have to apply for permanent historic-use-production permits through the Southern Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.

The permits will grant each well owner a maximum amount of water that may be pumped each year based on the well’s historic water use and the total number of wells in McLennan County.

The county’s combined water usage must not exceed 20,194 acre-feet — about 6.6 billion gallons — of water each year, an allowance set by the Texas Water Development Board.

Purdis Medlin, president of the Levi Water Supply Corp. in the Lorena area, told the district’s board at its biweekly meeting last week that limiting well owners’ water usage to historic levels could leave them unable to meet water demands if any new development occurs.

“We have people that were planning on developing some land in our area. But I’m concerned that if all we get is [based upon] our historic use, then we won’t be able to issue any more meters,” Medlin said.

James Smith of the Texas Rural Water Association attended the meeting with Medlin.

Smith monitors the rules mandated by different groundwater-conservation districts across the state and said Medlin’s concerns are shared by numerous other small water suppliers.

“If there’s new development, there will be an increased need for water. But if the suppliers can’t exceed their historic use, what we’re looking at is how restrictive that may be in providing water to consumers,” Smith said. “I think it’s something that the districts will have to consider as this progresses.”

Possible solution

Al Blair, an Austin-based civil engineer who has served as a consultant for the district on its groundwater-management plan, said one solution is to have water suppliers apply for additional, nonhistoric use production permits. That would guarantee them more water for their customer base.

However, those permits will be awarded only after the historic-use permits have been issued.

“I think it’s too early in the process to make that claim, that there won’t be enough water,” Blair said. “What our goal is right now is we want to protect the water being used now.

“We want to protect it and make sure you maintain that water and that it is not diminished. Then I believe we may have some room after that to guarantee water providers additional water for their future use.”

Blair said the Texas Water Development Board also is likely to review those water allowances in the next five years. The board potentially could increase the amount of water allotted to each region and grant more water to well owners.

The water district will have a meeting at 6 p.m. March 18 at the Hewitt Community Center, 208 Chama Drive, to answer well owners’ questions about the permit application.

The Pentagon and the Suckers

From AntiWar

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of  unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the  military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of  misplaced power exists and will persist.”

-Dwight Eisenhower, January 17,  1961 Farewell Address.

During pre game Super Bowl ceremonies Queen Latifah sang America the Beautiful. Following her, American Idol winner Carrie Underwood began  warbling the Star Spangled Banner. Four jet fighters swished over the  stadium. Did any of the cheering crowd or the tens of millions watching on  TV ask how much it cost to have the thrill of two screaming jets offer the  public supersonic foreplay before extra large men smashed and bashed through  the thin membrane (the line) to reach the tantalizing quarterback?

In his farewell address, Eisenhower would not have dreamed of adding  military sports/entertainment complex to his now fabled military industrial,  military scientific and academic complexes. Rather, he called for  ”statesmanship” by which he meant molding, balancing and integrating “these  and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic  system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

Empty rhetoric? Now, 44 cents of every taxpayer’s dollar feeds the military  budget at a time when no nation has a military capable of challenging us.  Maybe Obama should call for a national holiday just to appreciate the  failure of Presidents and Congresses to take Ike’s warning seriously.

The Orwellian name change from War Department to Defense Department should  have sparked national skepticism. Since 1947, DoD holds the world record for  spending, but has yet to defend the United States. Under the pretext of  defense, Truman sent troops to Korea (Eisenhower stopped U.S. involvement in  that war). Subsequently, U.S. troops have attacked and occupied more than a  dozen countries, none of whom threatened U.S. territory. (Korea, Dominican  Republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Somalia, the  former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan)

The DoD, however, cannot claim victory in its four major wars: Korea  (1950-3), Vietnam (1964-75), Afghanistan (2001-?) and Iraq (2003-?). Before  each invasion, war advocates shook the impending “domino” effect. Now it’s  the spread of terrorism. During the Cold War, all Asia would somehow fall  under red rule if the Chinese or Vietnamese Communists won in Korea or  Vietnam. The Communist Party still rules in China and Vietnam, both major  U.S. trade partners. U.S. forces triumphed in Grenada and Panama where they  met no major and ongoing resistance, and during Gulf War I, when Iraqi  troops retreated and got “turkey shot.”)

Last December despite the DoD’s no-win record when the enemy fights back and  without any sign that a rival nation plans an attack against us or any of  our vulnerable allies, Congress passed without debate the highest “defense”  budget in human history.

Since 1988, as the Soviet Union neared collapse and no major power  threatened, the military has ingested some $5.1 trillion. From 1999 to 2010,  the DoD budget increased 153%. After 2001, when 19 suicidal men armed with  box cutters hijacked and crashed planes into buildings, the Pentagon spent  more than it did in Cold War years.

Every two years since 2001, the military budget has grown approximately $100  billion. Did this reasoning presume more military prowess would defeat  civilian suicide bombers? Add to the Pentagon budget, $17 billion in  military-related items from the Department of Energy plus, $70 billion for  Homeland Security (isn’t that redundant with Defense Department?), $38  billion from the Military Retirement Funds found within the Department of  the Treasury, and military-related aid within the Department of State: the  present budget exceeds $1 trillion.

By 2008, total weapons acquisition “cost growth” had reached nearly $300  billion over initial estimates. In other words, cost overruns of weapons  alone surpassed the total 2000 defense budget! Why did the United States  government invest more, and at an increased rate, than when it faced all the  Soviet divisions and 20,000 nuclear weapons?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “the USA  is responsible for 41.5 per cent of the world’s total defense spending,  distantly followed by China (5.8% of world share), France (4.5%), the UK  (4.5%), and Russia (4%).”

In 2005, the total value of DoD assets was estimated at $1.3 trillion, with  $1.9 trillion in liabilities. The Department has a workforce of over 2.9  million of military and civilian personnel, much larger than any other  organization worldwide.

Wal-Mart, the largest corporate employer, has 1.8 million on payroll. The  Pentagon’s workforce is twice as large. The net income of the top ten global  Fortune 500s (including Exxon, Wal-Mart, BP, and Chevron) do not reach even  50% of DoD’s budget.

Last year, the Pentagon had 539,000 facilities (buildings, structures and  linear structures), and 5,570 military sites; it also occupies 29 million  acres of land, almost half the size of the United Kingdom.

The United States also has 837 overseas military bases, not including  undisclosed secret bases. The Pentagon has 716 bases in 150 of the 192  countries in the world; others in U.S. territories abroad. The DoD does not  count facilities with value of less than $10 million or those occupying less  than 10 acres. The Pentagon itself claims the record for biggest building in  human history (6.5 million square feet), 37 times larger than the Capitol.

Business scams promise high rates of return at little risk to investors. The  Pentagon, however, pledges only to keep the nation well defended from all  outside threats. Since no military threats have existed for almost two  decades, DoD officials and their neo-con cousins invent them. And the  suckers — U.S. taxpayers — invest.

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose A BUSH AND BOTOX  WORLD was published by Counterpunch.

Panic Time for Liberals

From The FFF

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Liberals seem to be getting bent out of shape over the fact that increasing numbers of people are challenging their statist paradigm. They’re suggesting that anyone who questions their beloved welfare-state socialism must be crazy, insane, irrational, greedy, selfish, and evil.

What’s starting to frustrate them is that they’re realizing that for the first time since the New Deal, people are not automatically accepting the liberal siren song for socialism and the standard liberal excuses for the economic woes facing our nation (e.g., greed, free enterprise, selfishness, big business, OPEC, capitalism, speculators, etc.).

From the first grade on up, for example, liberals have told Americans that the Great Depression was caused by the failure of America’s free-enterprise system and that the solution was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which were “socialist and fascist to the core.

Now, I’m not suggesting that liberals sold the New Deal by arguing the purported virtues of socialism and fascism. On the contrary, liberals were smart enough to realize that average Americans would never overtly embrace socialism and fascism.

So, what FDR and his statist cohorts did is couch their socialist and fascist programs in terms of “saving America’s free-enterprise system.” In that way, they were able to induce Americans to support a wholesale transformation of American life — from one based on the principles of economic liberty to one based on the principles of welfare-state socialism.

Consider Social Security. What do liberals say? They claim that this much-vaunted program simply evolved out of America’s free-enterprise system. It’s a retirement program, the statists say, one in which people deposit their money into a retirement fund, which earns interest, and then is available for withdrawal on retirement.

Yet, it’s all just a lie and a delusion. The Social Security program is nothing more than a straight socialist transfer program, one in which the government takes money from the young and productive and gives it to old people (and keeping some of it for itself).

The principle is the same, of course, with Medicare and Medicaid, which liberal icon LBJ, inspired by FDR’s Social Security program, brought into existence. Medicare and Medicaid are nothing more than socialistic programs than entail forcibly taking money from some people and giving it to others. Yet, it’s sold as just part and parcel of America’s “free-enterprise system”

This life of the lie — this life of delusion — is the same with respect to the Great Depression. But thanks to libertarians, Americans are learning that the Great Depression wasn’t caused by the failure of free enterprise at all. Instead, it was caused by monetary manipulation by the Federal Reserve, a governmental enterprise.

And they’re learning from us libertarians that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the entire panoply of welfare-state programs are not part and parcel of free enterprise but instead socialist violations of free enterprise.

So, give the manifest failure of socialism all over the world, why should it surprise anyone that socialism has failed here at home too? A defective system is a defective system, regardless of who’s running it.

According to an article entitled “Will the USS Budget Go Down? A Titanic Budget in an Ocean of Icebergs” by Jo Comerford, “59 percent of the budget’s spending is dedicated to mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and now Pell Grants. 34% is to be spent on ‘discretionary programs,’ including education, transportation, housing, and the military.”

So, isn’t the solution to America’s woes rather obvious? Abolish (don’t reform) all those socialist and interventionist programs, bring all the troops home and discharge them, and dismantle the military-industrial complex. That’s 93 percent of the budget right there. Wouldn’t that constitute a considerable savings in spending, one that would even enable Americans to abolish the federal income tax, a tax that our American ancestors lived without for more than 100 years?

Sure, liberals would go ballistic, just like conservatives would. But what better way to solve the woes of socialism and imperialism the statists have foisted on our country, along with the soaring spending, debt, taxes, and inflation, than to restore America’s heritage of economic liberty and a limited-government, constitutional republic to our land?

The Road to Dictatorship

From AntiWar.com

That 56 percent of all Americans “think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” isn’t really all that surprising. After all, ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government’s “right” to read our e-mails, seize our property, hold us as “enemy combatants,” and otherwise trample on the Constitution has been expanding at an exponential pace. What’s really shocking, however, is that, according to this CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll, released on Feb. 28, most of the people who believe this are overwhelmingly … Republicans. That is, they are self-described supporters of the very same party which impaled the Constitution on the sword of the “war on terrorism.” According to the poll, “only 37 percent of Democrats” believe this, as opposed to “63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans.”

Is it just me, or was it only yesterday that the Democratic base was outraged by “Bushitler,” and the “Cheney-PNAC” alleged neo-fascists who were taking over the country and driving dissent underground? How quickly they turn!

Adding to the irony, the poll was taken on the same weekend the extension of the PATRIOT Act passed the Democratic-controlled Congress – without debate, without a peep of protest from the “progressives” in Congress, and disguised as a vote in favor of a Senate amendment to the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. Bravery is not something we see much of in Washington, D.C. As one blogger put it:

“So, if you heard the news of a Patriot Act vote, and went looking for the roll call, you wouldn’t find it. You’d see roll call # 67 for this year, but would reasonably conclude that the vote is thoroughly unrelated to the Patriot Act. If you hadn’t heard of the Patriot Act extension, and just wanted to see what legislation had been voted on yesterday, you would come away still ignorant of what the House of Representatives had actually done.”

The shamefaced Democrats are too cowardly to openly acknowledge their contribution to the destruction of the Constitution: instead, they’re hoping we don’t notice more Democrats than Republicans voted for the extension of this odious Act. At one point, the Dems were hinting that they might want to “reform” the Act, and put in certain “privacy protections,” but they soon gave that up and now their media amen corner is busy demonizing “anti-government zealots” who dare to question the ongoing government takeover of … practically everything.

Keith Olbermann is still going on about how many days it’s been since George W. Bush declared “Mission accomplished!” in Iraq – even as President Barack Obama’s generals warn that we’ll still be stuck in that particular quagmire well beyond the withdrawal date supposedly set by their commander-in-chief. Not only that, but Obama is fighting a secret war in Pakistan, continuing the previous administration’s war on our civil liberties, and extending its tentacles into every aspect of American life – yes, even our health care.

The “PATRIOT” Act, all several hundred pages of it, was passed in the dead of night without being read, without being adequately debated, and with the full official approval of both parties, who unhesitatingly wiped out two-hundred years of constitutional law in a procedure that lasted for less than an hour.

“The president’s reversal on Patriot Act reform is a major travesty,” says Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, a bit of phraseology that just about sums up the first year of Obama’s reign. All those liberal hearts, broken by that seductive love-’em-and-leave-’em Chicago smoothie – except no one’s complaining.

The Associated Press reported the vote in terms that can only be described as odd:

“Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the nation’s primary counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations. The proposed protections were cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them.”

The Democrats have … retreated? Since most of them voted for the “PATRIOT” Act to begin with, I wouldn’t exactly phrase it that way.

As the Democratic majority gets ready to ram an immensely unpopular “health-care reform” bill through the Congress without a “super-majority,” one can only wonder at their priorities. Is it really more important to force poor Americans to buy insurance they can’t afford than it is to save our constitutional liberties from being crushed underfoot?

Apparently so.

Passed in a time of “emergency,” and touted as a temporary measure, the “PATRIOT” Act has, like all such measures, become routine: part and parcel of the legal-political landscape, which no one really questions. The “right” of the government to impound our records, seize our property, jail us, fine us, and haul us before a military tribunal – all of this has now become “normal.”

Did you know that a recipient of a “National Security Letter” – say, your Internet provider – must not only hand over all records, documents, and what-have-you to the Feds, but must also refrain from talking about or otherwise revealing the existence of the letter? Just like they can simply take you in the dead of night, throw you in a cell– and, yes, even torture you, if they feel like it – and no one need ever know.

Accepting this as a fait accompli is now “normal” in Washington, D.C. No wonder the majority of Americans consider the federal government a dangerous enemy – and they’re all too right about that.

The question is: what do we do about it? Here’s where the confusion comes in. While there are many indications that Americans are waking up to the main danger to their liberty and livelihoods – a danger that doesn’t reside in a cave somewhere, overseas, but right here in the good ol’ US of A – the political class in this country is deeply ensconced, and won’t be pried out of power with a crowbar. It will take something with a lot more explosive power.

No, I’m not talking about an ordinary bomb – violence would only embolden them. I’m talking about the debt bomb, which is scheduled to go off in the very near future. We won’t have to defeat the army of federal occupation militarily – because they’re about to go bankrupt. Just wait until they can’t pay their SWAT teams, their Homeland Security goons, their multitudinous minions in every snooping federal agency: do they imagine that these people will stay on out of loyalty or ideological fervor? Or out of “patriotism”? Well of course they don’t imagine that, which is why, these days, they’re notably nervous.

This nervousness pervades elite circles in this country, and is expressed in a peevish impatience with any sort of dissidence, on any subject: if you fall out of line, they swat you – and you stay down, if they can help it. The tea-partiers, the antiwar protesters (such as they are), the stray politician who dares speak truth to power – anyone who expresses an opinion deemed outside the very narrow range of the permissible is automatically attacked as a “extremist,” a dangerous “radical,” and very possibly a potentially violent person whose every move is rightfully being mapped by the authorities.

Intersecting with this skittishness is an impending sense of economic and social crisis. Real fear, such as we haven’t experienced in a mass way since 9/11, pervades the air: an entirely justified fear of an economic collapse. Last year, when the banks trembled on the edge of a very steep precipice, lawmakers were told “in private” that if the bank bailout wasn’t passed, “there would be martial law in America,” as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California) revealed on the House floor. “Now that’s what I call fear-mongering,” said Rep. Sherman, but in my view this wasn’t a bluff. In the midst of an economic collapse, an “event” in which the stock market drops by, say, 5,000 points, and there’s a run on the dollar, as Ron Paul predicts, I don’t think there’s any question but that the authorities would immediately impose martial law.

In Ayn Rand’s classic novel of American decline, Atlas Shrugged, a giant oak tree stands on the property of the heroine’s family estate: it had been there as long as she could remember, towering over the landscape like a living monument to stability and continuity. One night during a thunderstorm the tree – an oak – was struck by lightning. When she came out to the charred scene in the morning she saw that the tree had split open, revealing nothing but a hollow shell.

I’m afraid this is precisely what will happen if – or, rather, when – economic lightning hits our brittle society: it is likely to shatter and reveal the vast emptiness that has taken over where the American character once resided. As Rep. Paul points out in this video, rather than resisting martial law, the American people in their majority will probably demand it.

That will mark the end of the American experiment, as we knew it. The vision of the Founders will go down in history as a tragic failure – one that took an awful lot of people down with it.

If this is not to be the future, then where are the mass protests against the reauthorization of a totalitarian Act such as hasn’t been seen in this country since the Alien and Sedition Acts? Where are the liberals? Where are the old-style conservatives? Where is the America I once knew – the America of the Founders, a cantankerous and quarrelsome lot, whom no tyrant could tame? I fear we have become a decadent and fatally corrupted people, for whom the Founders are those guys with funny wigs, slave-owners who wouldn’t let women vote, with a lot of strange, anti-social ideas, like Jefferson’s Tim McVeigh-ish belief that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

A few liberals, like Glenn Greenwald, have spoken out, but their numbers only underscore the underlying silence: a few conservatives of the old school have raised their voices in protest, but they, too, are isolated, and are, in any case, ignored by their fellows on the right, at least those in the GOP, who vehemently support the “PATRIOT” Act and all the rest of the Bush-Cheney era legislation aimed at subverting the Constitution.

“Oh Obama, you silly neocon!” japed Ryan Mauro over at Frontpage, and for once I have to agree with (yikes!) David Horowitz:

“Sometimes partisanship and heated debates makes us forget how little has changed and how little really divides the two parties when it comes to national security. The rhetoric was changed and the policies had to be repackaged, modified a little bit to better fit the administration’s own beliefs and political promises, but what’s actually being done has changed very little. Policies, like celebrities, need to be reinvented to stay with the times.

“Case in point: President Obama has just signed a one-year extension of the Patriot Act.

“The entire legislation wasn’t preserved, though—so surely it was refined to limit its violations of civil liberties, right? Think again. As The Associated Press reports, ‘Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.’ Oh, snap!”

I’m unsure as to whether “Oh, snap!” is meant approvingly, but no matter. The point is that this is “change” the neocons can believe in. And while the anti-Obama market is too lucrative for Horowitz to give it up, others are not so “principled.” David Frum, whose own security prescriptions go way beyond the “PATRIOT” Act, has lately been urging his fellow conservatives to go a little easier on Obama, and urging compromise on economic matters – because what the neocons really care about is foreign policy and civil liberties questions. As long as we have an all-powerful surveillance state, which is waging war on multiple fronts at all times, the David Frums of this world are happy.

I hope the folks over at the David Horowitz Center for Freedom, or whatever it is his outfit is called these days, are confident that the power they would grant the Obama administration will never be used in a way they would come to regret – say, against them. But don’t worry, David: when they come for you and lock you up in a reeducation camp, we’ll spring you – you know, like your former buddies in the Weather Underground sprang Timothy Leary.

Aside from neocon loons like Horowitz, I think a lot of “progressives” would readily support the imposition of martial law in an “economic emergency” – as Rahm Emanuel would say, “Rule one: never allow a crisis to go to waste.” Can’t you just hear certain self-righteous “progressives” (not liberals) justifying censorship, a ban on public gatherings, or other assaults on our constitutional rights, on the grounds that certain speech and nonviolent action is “divisive,” “hateful,” and a threat to public order? I certainly hope conservatives don’t learn to value civil liberties the hard way, but if that’s what it takes, then so be it.

By then liberals will have already forgotten that particular lesson – and the ideological spectrum will undergo yet another re-polarization, where left becomes right, right becomes left, and the cycle starts all over again….